Archive

Well, the world’s best rechargeable battery, Eneloop is 5 years old now, and the company behind it, Sanyo is trying to have a bash party for it. How? They’re going to bling up their Eneloop batteries. Here comes the Eneloop Tones Glitter limited edition set. Packs of eight technicolored AA and AAA Eneloops will go on sale in Japan on November 14, augmenting the brand’s signature longevity with a dash (hell, make it a heaping) of glamorous style. Yes, being glamorous behind plastic cases of electronic devices. That’s cool.

Somehow, people seemed to love the PlayBook by RIM. Part of it might be the OS developed by QNX. Now RIM has announced the availability of the Adobe AIR SDK for their BlackBerry Tablet OS. Tagging along this SDK is something called the BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator. Hopefully we will see lots of applications for the PlayBook once it hits retail. The simulator requires Adobe AIR 2.5 to run, while the latest release from RIM’s site is still offering 2.0.2. So be patient and wait for RIM to update its site if you’re eager to play around with the SDK.

Here’s the official commercial of the Palm Pre 2, with the fresh new webOS 2.0. if you look at the video embedded below, you’ll see Angry Birds, Facebook and some new 2.0 features being featured in the video. Is HP making a runaway success with this much delayed product? At least the ad does look catchy with that tune. Very ‘HP’ indeed.

General Motors seemed to love classical arcade games, as they go back to our sweet old childhood in their latest advertisement for their little new compact sedan. Well, there’s no harm in playing Pac Man when you’re trying hard to sell your latest global car, since nearly the whole world knows Pac Man game, I think. Read more…

Yes, everything needs to be torn down, and that also includes Logitech’s latest Revue. So, as usual, we have the iFixit crew ripping them apart with their knives. What they find out is not a big surprise. The Revue is essentially a dated netbook with an aesthetic plastic casing. A 1.2GHz Atom CPU is what you get in the Revue. Thought that’s somewhat better than Apple’s 1GHz A4 processor in their Apple TV, but Logitech’s version seemed to have more cookies to bite off. Read more…

Google Instant coming to mobile already? That’s what some readers of Droid Life said. It seemed that Google has started sneaking out its Instant search option to Android phones in the USA. So far, reports include the original Motorola Droid, the Droid X, and HTC’s Droid Incredible. Lest you’ve been enjoying a lengthy holiday in the tropics, Google Instant throws up search results as you type your query, delivering either much faster results or a much more annoying search experience, depending on how you look at it. Reported operation so far aligns with our early hands-on, with Instant taking a bit of time to get its bearings, but the software is still at the beta stage, after all. Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s try it on your droid phone.

Android 2.2 already has Flash Player 10.1 supported, so now Adobe is making the real big move to have their latest Flash Player in nearly all smartphones, except for one very arrogant fruit company’s smartphone. Yes, at their latest Max conference, Adobe has announce that their plug-in will be heading their way into Microsoft’s latest Windows Phone 7, as well as BlackBerry OS (not sure whether only the 6 will have it, or older versions as well), and HP’s latest WebOS 2.0, the dying Symbian, MeeGo, and last but not least, the LiMo platform. Unfortunately, there’s still no timeline for a release on each platform, with Adobe only saying that that Flash 10.1 is “expected” to hit each mobile OS.

Adobe is holding a MAX conference, and somehow RIM was there as a hardware partner. This was well linked to their latest tablet, the PlayBook, which has ‘out-of-the-box’ Flash and Air support. Adobe and RIM have announced availability today of an Air SDK targeting the PlayBook’s QNX-based platform with deep hardware integration, giving devs plenty of ramp-up time considering that the tablet won’t be available until early next year. Kobo was among the companies on-hand to talk about the sheer awesomeness of the dev environment, and the general attitude toward the PlayBook’s ease of development seems to be a positive one. “That’s the real YouTube site, not an app”. Take that, Apple. (but frankly speaking, having a dedicated YouTube app is much more convenient.) Read more…

Adobe has announced at their Adobe MAX conference that their Adobe AIR 2.5 software will be reaching to your televisions, tablets, smartphones, and desktop operating systems. Being a part of the Adobe Flash Platform, AIR enables developers to leverage existing code to create and deliver standalone applications across devices and platforms, making apps running around your televisions. Adobe AIR now supports smartphones and tablets based on Android™, iOS, BlackBerry® Tablet OS, and desktops including Windows®, Macintosh and Linux® operating systems. In addition, Samsung will be the first television manufacturer to ship Adobe AIR in its line of Samsung SmartTV devices while Acer, HTC, Motorola, RIM, Samsung and others are expected to ship the runtime pre-installed on a variety of devices including tablets and smartphones later this year and early 2011. That would include RIM’s latest PlayBook. Read more…